Databases

Once a lesser-known category of software, databases have become a more and more important part of technical communication practice. Today databases often drive documentation collections, including content management systems and wikis. The most sophisticated databases tend to employ the SQL language.

Rather than exporting a whole document out of Acrobat, I'll focus on a table within a PDF page. Suppose you'd like to have this table's data in a spreadsheet so you can manipulate it. There's no need to retype the data into Excel. All you need to do is use Acrobat's Selection tool to highlight the content you wish to export.

Most people in the XML community are aware of the term, "Native XML Database." Fewer are aware of the design details and implementation trade-offs made in construction of a native XML database.
This paper focuses on issues surrounding storage in a native XML database. The format of stored XML, as well as the granularity of stored documents, has a large effect on database design and scalability, as well as how a system may be used by an application. Indexing of stored information is another topic that is at the core of XML database performance.

To jump-start revenue growth, Mark Jarvis has insisted that simplicity be the foundation not only of Oracle's marketing but also of its product development. Programmers, salespeople, and marketing staff now work closely to satisfy real customer problems, not just deliver glitz. On Nov. 18, Mark Jarvis spoke with BusinessWeek Online Technology reporter Jane Black about his plans to improve Oracle's fortunes. Here are edited excerpts from that conversation.

The presenters summarize and discuss two emerging paradigms for defining a technical communication body of knowledge: the EServer Technical Communication Library and the Society for Technical Communication's TCBOK project. The respondent sums up the alternatives presented, then frame the discussion of possibilities these projects present for advancing the field.

Most developers dread dealing with HTML tables and cells to build their Web sites. For one thing, tables make it difficult to modify the site later or to change its appearance. Discover some basic techniques for writing Web sites that you can later re-skin by using templates during the site's initial creation. Also, learn why you should use data-driven techniques for your own Web sites.

Many technical communicators manage large collections of graphic files and must keep track of which graphics are used in which deliverables. An effective tool for managing a collection of graphic files is a relational database management system (RDMS) such as Microsoft Access. Before the database can be built in Access, it is necessary to 1) create detailed functional requirements and 2) build a high-level conceptual model from which the database relations (tables) can be derived. A spreadsheet program can be used to build the conceptual model and generate the relations. Normalization checks should be performed on the relations before the database is implemented in Access.

The Web-surfing public doesn't really care about flashy-yet-useless technology. They want Web sites that do something for them: provide a service or entertainment; help get a job or a date; check bank account balances, stock prices, interest rates, availability of airline tickets, today's weather ... and so on.

Explains how recent legislation and the effects of corporate scandals have necessitated greater due diligence on companies and individuals. Gives details of relevant existing and forthcoming legislation and discusses how a due diligence process can ensure compliance with the law. Points out that prospective clients, employees and investors may all require investigation, and then reviews some of the information sources available for use in both corporate and individual investigations. Considers the impact of international developments, particularly in the light of increased merger and acquisition activity, and discusses some of the barriers to acquiring effective due diligence. Finally considers the applicability of selected commercial databases.

A large percentage of MySQL users are using MySQL on a web server hosted by an ISP. Most hosting providers block port 3306 (the MySQL server port) at the firewall, preventing outside access to MySQL. This is an important security practice and you should be very concerned if your ISP does not block port 3306. In this article I will demonstrate how to connect the MySQL GUI tools, including MySQL Administrator and MySQL Query Browser, to a remote server using SSH port forwarding. This article will be written with the assumption that the reader is using Microsoft Windows, but the principles presented will be applicable to Linux users.

With the growing use of dynamic web content generated from relational databases, traditional caching solutions for throughput and latency improvements are ineffective. We describe a middleware layer called Ganesh that reduces the volume of data transmitted without semantic interpretation of queries or results. It achieves this reduction through the use of cryptographic hashing to detect similarities with previous results. These beneﬁts do not require any compromise of the strict consistency semantics provided by the back-end database. Further, Ganesh does not require modiﬁcations to applications, web servers, or database servers, and works with closed-source applications and databases. Using two benchmarks representative of dynamic web sites, measurements of our prototype show that it can increase end-to-end throughput by as much as twofold for non-data intensive applications and by as much as tenfold for data intensive ones.

Microsoft Word supports many file formats which can be used as a Data Source for a mail merge. This article covers specifications and frequently asked questions on the most commonly used Data Sources, along with how to set up a Data Source in Word.

Are you storing data about your constituents in three, five, even ten different databases? If so, you're not alone ' but it's costing you in time, lost revenue and decreased impact. Paul Hagen describes how to get all your data into one place with an integrated CRM strategy.

With the overall purpose of improving the information literacy skills of librarianship and information science students, an academic portal specifically centred on abstracts and abstracting resources is proposed. We take the existing literature, together with our knowledge and experience of abstract/abstracting topics and web-based technologies to conceive the research design. The research mainly consists of the selection, assessment and web-display of the most relevant abstracts on knowledge management, information representation, natural language processing, abstract/abstracting, modelling the scientific document, information retrieval and information evaluation. The resulting Cyberabstracts portal presents its products consistently and includes reference, abstract, keywords, assessment and access to the full document. Improvement opportunities for this unique subject-based gateway, representing much more than a mere subject catalogue, are uncovered as the starting point on a planned route towards excellence.

If you ask an application developer what the most important task is in developing new or enhanced applications for institutional data and processes, almost every time they will tell you it is the initial analysis of client requirements. Before purchasing any software, before storing a single byte of data in a database, analysis of the client's requirements is paramount to developing the appropriate solution.

When query results exceed the display area then you resort to scrolling and wish you had some way to limit the number of results displayed and comfortable to view without scrolling. Paging functionality which provides an answer to this is therefore a much desired feature. The Data Pager Control in Visual Studio 2008 provides this functionality when you create an ASP.NET web form under .NET Framework 3.5. It can be configured automatically using the GUI, or it can be installed manually after installing the ListView. In this article both of them are described. While the number of items displayed in a list can be declaratively coded, it is possible to set it at page load time as well.

A decision support database that is maintained separately from the organization's operational database. Support information processing by providing a solid platform of consolidated, historical data for analysis.

After the novel, and subsequently cinema privileged narrative as the key form of cultural expression of the modern age, the computer age introduces its correlate - database. Many new media objects do not tell stories; they don't have beginning or end; in fact, they don't have any development, thematically, formally or otherwise which would organize their elements into a sequence. Instead, they are collections of individual items, where every item has the same significance as any other.

Imagine controlling your customers' information, including how it is updated, managed, printed and distributed. Printers that provide database management services don't have to dream about such a scenario.

When it comes to providing reliable, flexible and efficient object persistence for software systems, today's designers and architects are faced with many choices. From the technological perspective, the choice is usually between pure Object-Oriented, Object-Relational hybrids, pure Relational and custom solutions based on open or proprietary file formats (eg. XML, OLE structured storage). From the vendor aspect Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, POET and others offer similar but often-incompatible solutions.
This article is about only one of those choices, that is the layering of an object-oriented class model on top of a purely relational database. This is not to imply this is the only, best or simplest solution, but pragmatically it is one of the most common, and one that has the potential for the most misuse.

Once you've built several MySQL databases, you'll learn some shortcuts to database design. Why stop there? Take this trick a step further and put together a generic database with a set of empty, standard tables. With a well-designed MySQL template, you can quickly assemble the basics of any database as needed. A template also allows you to focus on the more interesting aspects of a database project.

This detailed, inclusive database tutorial is designed for beginners and those ready to dive in. Easy-to-understand definitions, real-world anecdotes, and concrete examples set this site apart from the others.